There has been much hair-pulling over the impending death of newspapers and other traditional forms of media. A downbeat article in The Atlantic by Michael Hirschorn, postulating that the New York Times could go out of business as early as this May, garnered more than a few headlines. More significant, Hirschorn’s piece bounced all over the web, where people read, free of charge, his article from the print edition of The Atlantic (newsstand price: $5.99) about why nobody is buying the New York Times ($1.50) because they can read it for free online.
Fortunately, the Huffington Post, frequently cited as a harbinger of future journalism, has figured out how to save the New York Times. The plan, as outlined by Monroe Price, involves a journalism bailout bill and “rethinking the First Amendment as a positive call for non-market support of a meaningful journalism.” That last bit is Price proposing new taxes to subsidize newspapers, in perpetuity. The ridiculousness of Price’s plan doesn’t stop there.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ADVERTISEMENT
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To ease the transition from paper to digital, Price wants to “bring down the price of the [Amazon] Kindle”—an electronic reader that delivers newspaper content, among much else, via cellular networks—to less than $25, so that newspapers can use it to reach a broader audience. The Kindle currently retails for more than $350, so what Price is really talking about is providing a taxpayer-funded subsidy of more than $325 a pop. That way, millions of Americans could enjoy a piece of gee-whiz consumer electronics enabling them to read news that they didn’t want to pay for in the first place, which they will instead be taxed to support.
Of course, any idiot could (and many do) have posting privileges on the Huffington Post, so why should we care what Monroe Price thinks? Consider the fact that “Monroe Price is director of the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and Professor of Law at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law in New York.” His ideas will be shaping the next generation of reporters and editors.
Since indulging bizarre fantasies seems to be the preferred way of analyzing the journalism industry’s woes, here are a few suggestions for those establishment media managers working overtime to ensure that harsh critical assessments don’t actually threaten to improve their product. Hints for avoiding harsh realities:
TIP 1: DENY MARKET FORCES AT WORK.
Price claims: “The case for [bailout] legislation is the relatively easy part: our idea of a democratic society depends on the notion of informed voters, and of a press that can serve as a watchdog and critic of power.” In truth, that’s not an easy case to make at all. Price casually assumes that print journalism is in such dire straits that it will soon no longer be able to provide the information voters need, much less to serve in a watchdog capacity.
Nonsense. A journalist friend recently reported that he’d been promoted to covering the Senate and explained that he was having difficulty settling into the new job—because there are 220 reporters currently covering the Senate, and the competition is fierce. “We’re all a bunch of pigeons standing around waiting to pounce on whatever breadcrumbs Harry Reid tosses out,” he said, sighing into his beer.
If half of the media organizations employing those journalists went out of business tomorrow, you’d still have 110 full-time reporters covering the United States Senate. With more reporters than senators, we should hardly be concerned about the Senate being under-covered. And that’s saying nothing of the blogs and other forms of non-traditional media that weigh in and dissect the Senate’s machinations 24/7.
This is just one example, of course, and many observers point to the fact that local news is among the biggest casualties of media downsizing. However, there are copious examples of new media’s picking up the slack in local news markets, including neighborhood blogs, listservs, message boards, and social networks. But the traditional media won’t learn from any of these examples, and will instead pretend they don’t exist.
